Watch at Home: The Children Act, The Rider, Puzzle

What's newly available for home viewing this week? 

DVD/Blu-Ray
• Alpha - Kodi Smith-McPhee (The Road, X-Men Apocalypse) stars in this prehistoric adventure film about a boy and his wolf friend
• Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings -Marc Chao reprises his popular Detective Dee role. The previous title started with "Young Detective Dee" but I guess now that Chao is 34 they feel "Young" is pushing it? The previous film was ... bonkers. 
• Juliet, Naked  -Rose Byrne & Ethan Hawke star in this well-reviewed romcom
• The Meg -the campy giant-shark flick was a sleeper hit
• Mile 22 -Another gun-loving actioner from Peter Berg & Mark Wahlberg
• Puzzle - Two of our most reliable but underappreciated screen actors Kelly Macdonald and Irffan Khan star in this story about a woman who discovers a passion for solving puzzles

New iTunes 99¢ Deals
• Death of Stalin -Armando Iannucci (of In the Loop and Veep fame) is back with another political comedy. This one was up for Best British Independent Film Awards last year but released in the US this year.
• The Rider  -Chinese director Chloé Zhao made one of the most celebrated debut films of the past two years. It was up for Indie Spirit prizes last year and is nominated for Best Film this year (when it was released) at the Gothams.
• Diner -Barry Levinson's beloved 1982 debut was a Golden Globe Best Picture nominee and an Oscar nominee for Best Screenplay in its time. The cast is a who's who of then rising stars: Ellen Barkin, Kevin Bacon, Steve Guttenberg, and Paul Reiser.

-What do they call you? Your Highness? Your Excellency? Your Honourable Something?
-In court it's "My Lady"

Brand New Streaming
• The Children Act -Amazon Prime has the Emma Thompson film about a no-nonsense judge whose marriage is faltering while she's working on a case involving a teenager (Fionn Whitehead) who refuses a blood transfusion that could save his life.
• Green Room - Netflix is streaming this brutal neo-nazi thriller from summer 2016 starring the late Anton Yelchin and Sir Patrick Stewart.

Top 10: Oscar's All Time Favorite Leading Men

by Nathaniel R

I was shocked to realize that De Niro, Hanks, Penn, and Pacino -- none of them made the top ten!

Okay okay. Since we did Supporting Men and Supporting Women during the summer, I figured we should complete the set. Who are Oscar's 10 favorite leading men? We'll work the ranking like so: Nominations count most, with wins acting like half a nomination to help determine rank. The tiebreaker is the spread of time of nominations which can denote either long term fandom on the Academy's part or shortlived enthusiasms. If there's still a tie at that point, other Oscar statistics (like if they were nominated for producing or supporting or whatnot) break the tie.

Only 20 men throughout film history have scored 5 or more nominations for Best Lead Actor and though this year's currently pulsing competition for Best Actor is chalk full of previous nominees, none of them are regulars to that degree. Here are the ten runners up followed by the all-time top ten list... 

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Doc Corner: Movie Stars - Fonda, Kael and Dukakis

by Glenn Dunks

DOC NYC is still going in New York, running until this Thursday the 15th. We’re looking at just a very small selection of films screening at the festival including these today based around three iconic names in American cinema: film critic Pauline Kael, and Oscar-winning actors Jane Fonda and Olympia Dukakis.

WHAT SHE SAID: THE ART OF PAULINE KAEL
I noted on social media as I sat down to watch my screener of Rob Garver’s biography that there were certainly worse ways to spend one’s Sunday evening than surrounded by the words of the late, great Pauline Kael and an abundance of film clips. Sometimes a film can give you exactly what you ask for and that’s exactly what I received from What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael about the much loved (and loathed) film critic...

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Excelsior Links

• /Film Michelle Yeoh may be headlining a Star Trek spin-off series
• Towleroad Greg Berlanti (Love Simon) plans to direct a Rock Hudson biopic
• Variety This is so cool. The animation studio Aardman (Chicken Run, Wallace & Gromit, etcetera) is transferring its ownership to its employees. Peter Lord will stay on as creative director

 

• MNPP Raúl Castillo joins the already amazing cast of Rian Johnson's Knives Out
• Awards Daily Adam McKay promoting Vice says something he might regret about the difference between Cheney and Trump
• Playbill Did you hear they're releasing another album for The Greatest Showman? This one is all covers. Kelly Clarkson is doing "Never Enough"
• Kinja great deal if you're a Potter person. All 8 Harry Potter films on bluray for just $40
• Cinema Eye Honors, which honors documentary films (we guess it's the week for that?), release their nominations for the year with Bing Liu's Minding the Gap leading with 7 nominations and Bisbee '17, Hale County This Morning This Evening and Shirkers each receiving 5. All are eligible for the Oscars this year, too.
• Boy Culture what Matt said about this odd quote from Michael C Hall on his sexuality
• The Guardian Controversy! German Playboy has published an interview with Ennio Morricone in which he trashes Quentin Tarantino. Now Morricone says he never gave that interview and will take legal action.

R.I.P.
• Variety Stan Lee, Marvel's figurehead and comic book legend, has died at 95. One assumes we have four final Stan Lee cameos coming up, though. He gets a bit in Into the Spider-Verse (yes, I've seen it but we're not allowed to talk about it yet). And surely he'll be in Captain Marvel, Infinity War Part 2, and Spider-Man: Far From Home , since they're all in post production already.
• The Guardian Douglas Rain, the voice of HAL in 2001 has died at 90.

Exit Video
Here's another cover from The Greatest Showman Reimagined from P!nk and her daughter Willow Sage Hart

P.S. Alarming!
Grammy winner Beck tweeted out that he was recording a score for Roma. Naturally this is upsetting because the movie has screened for months and actually has no score. The soundscape is so unique and immersive and tons of critics have praised the movie for this craftsmanship exactly. Why would they change it now after all the praise? I'm currently having nightmares of what happened to A Star is Born (1954) and The New World (2005) when the studio kept meddling after screenings with something that was already brilliant and perfect to the point where some people never could see the original version and in the case of A Star is Born it was lost for all time.